“Wasn’t that a sweet threesome?” I asked Atticus last night over dinner. I was referring to the absurdly hot trio of two men and one woman in Oliver Stone’s Savages that we had seen over the weekend. “I mean, didn’t you feel they really loved each other?”
Atticus chuckled.
“That would never happen. Two men would never share a woman. It was like Salma Hayek told Blake Lively — the guys loved each other more than her.”
I responded a bit defensively.
“They were willing to die for her. To spend every penny of their pot business to rescue her. And buy her an entire year’s new wardrobe! They loved her.”
Atticus shot me a look: you poor, delusional middle-aged woman.
“Two men and a woman, yes. But that — no.”
“But why not? Why do we expect to see a man with two women but not the other way around?”
“The love story was between the two guys,” he insisted. “Besides, the three of them were so stoned all the time, they had no idea what was going on.”
“They loved her,” I insisted right back at him. “It was real.”
* * *
I woke up thinking about Savages the morning after we saw it. It wasn’t just the hotness that lingered. It was the perfect unity of the threeway relationship, the sense that these three orphaned souls had formed their own family, and were so fiercely loyal that they would die for each other — it was that blend of eroticism and undying love that set up camp in my mind, then wrapped itself around me like a cashmere pashmina.
I tweeted about it and my boss sent me a Facebook IM.
“You’re recommending Savages?” she asked.
“Run, don’t walk.” I replied. “Then tell me which guy you think is hotter.”
I went to my favorite beauty supply store to buy peroxide. To stretch out time between hair appointments and save me money, my new stylist had given me color and instructions for touching up my roots. So I bought a bottle of peroxide, a mixing bowl, a little spatula and a brush. Also, a new lipstick to go with my new roots.
As I headed back to my car, I got a text from my boss:
“I’d have to take Ben. Although perhaps one needs both.”
If you’ve seen the movie, then you know that the two male leads, Ben and Chon, together comprise the perfect mate: triple Alpha, a wild animal protecting its turf…
… yet sensitive, exquisitely tender and passionate, and capable of enduring love.
Five minutes later, I got another text. My boss had clearly been on IMBD.
“In real life Ben is married to a woman 23 years older! And they have two kids!”
“WHAT???” I texted back.
When I got home, I IMDB’d Aaron Johnson, the actor who played Ben, and sure enough discovered that he was married to his one-time director, Sam Taylor-Wood, whom he had first impregnated when he was nineteen. NINETEEN!
Sam is now 45, has had two of Aaron’s children, and is gorgeous. But she also looks old enough to be his mother. Which she is. Old enough — not his mother.
Sam was quoted as saying that Aaron persuaded her to have children and has brought “family values” to her life. He prefers to stay at home with the kids and even took a year’s hiatus to be at home with the first baby.
The story of Sam and Aaron: now that’s an erotic e-novel I’d like to read! I have no interest in checking out the 50 Shades of Gray phenom. As a middle-aged woman, I can’t identify with a dewy-eyed waif trembling at her impending frenetic deflowerment by an older, cosmopolitan man. I know it’s the domination theme in 50 Shades that’s supposed to pull people in, but at this point in my life I’m more compelled by the story of a young man turned on by a mature woman’s wisdom and lived experience.
And also, perhaps, by her gray roots.
Chime in, 40-plus women: wouldn’t you rather see who you are NOW reflected in a romance/erotic novel, should you choose to read one? Wouldn’t it be satisfying to feel that a man, even a young man, would pass over a younger version of you, for a real you — a you with a face featuring character and crows’s feet instead of duck lips and immobilized brows? Wouldn’t it be refreshing to see experience, not blank-slatedness, as a man’s aphrodisiac?
And to have two men vying for your gorgeously middle-aged self? Maybe I need to sit my shapely bad ass down and write that e-book…
Start writing!
This would be way more interesting than Fifty Shades of Gray. Get busy girlfriend
What a delicious post. And I’m all for erotic novels that are good literature! (May I mention a few files in a drawer…she grins) But if not well conceived and written, they fall, um, flat.
And of course we like to imagine that a man ofanyage whom we find desirable would prefer the “real us” to the much younger (and more clueless) version! But at 50, I don’t desire 30… 40 is a different matter…
Personally, I’m tired of being defined by my age as either I’m over the hill, or I’m an older woman who is so much better than younger women because you know, older women have their act together.
Hardly anyone writes stories that are worth reading about older women in romantic relationships because there’s a yawn factor, regardless of genre. (I think that this is a market that would explode if some smart writers got their brains working).
That women would pay money to read 50 Shades is beyond my comprehension. There are much better books out there if they’re looking for romance fiction that doesn’t include being a submissive idiot. My two cents.
So what kind of “older woman” romantic literature would you like to read, Karen?
Pauline, I would just like to read “normal” stories about older women and the men they’re involved with. And it’s not just older women who are left out of stories, it’s men as well. It’s like there’s this huge divide and once people cross a certain age, it’s like they’re considered too old to either have a sex life or want one. (normal meaning nothing weird, but everyone’s definition of that is different).
Good points. Thanks for clarifying, Karen.
Well, if you’ve got the time to write it I’d surely be reading it. At least I can pretend in the books I read that the hero/heroine are closer to my age that if I see a movie.
I hardly ever go to the movies anymore because I don’t feel like my age group is well represented on screen. Last movie I saw/loved about “adults” was “It’s Complicated.” How many years ago was that?!
I’ll pre-order it.
I want to know the tips for touching up my own roots!:)
Mix half color and half peroxide in a bowl until the consistency is like sour cream. Take a brush and apply dye to roots only — do not put over hair that still has color in it. Wait 50 minutes and rinse!
If you write it, they will come…as it were…
LOL
Even as a young lass myself, I would much prefer your version of a story! Get to writin!
I saw the film yesterday, and I was enchanted to see in a film the possibility of having thee gorgeous men loving -and dying for- a single woman… Oh! I just remember films are ilussions… Wep! I keep dreaming…. good post!!! With love from Spain, Stef